Officials find way to preserve MinnesotaCare

State and federal officials have come up with a way to preserve Minnesota's subsidized health care plan for the working poor when the federal health overhaul takes effect.

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By Steve Karnowski, Associated Press

Crookston Times - Crookston, MN

By Steve Karnowski, Associated Press

Posted Feb. 7, 2013 at 10:00 AM

By Steve Karnowski, Associated Press
Posted Feb. 7, 2013 at 10:00 AM

Minneapolis, Minn.

State and federal officials have come up with a way to preserve Minnesota's subsidized health care plan for the working poor when the federal health overhaul takes effect, Minnesota's human services commissioner said Wednesday.

Around 130,000 Minnesotans are currently enrolled in MinnesotaCare, which helps cover premiums for people who make too much to enroll in Medicaid but not enough to afford regular insurance. However, the program as currently structured conflicts with the federal health law, meaning many participants were facing the prospect of sharply higher premiums. State officials had been trying for months to get answers from Washington on how to prevent that from happening.

The guidance issued Wednesday by the federal Department of Health and Human Services means at least 38,000 and possibly more than 90,000 people will get to stay in a revamped MinnesotaCare, depending on how several moving pieces ultimately fit together, said Jeremy Drucer, a spokesman for the state human services agency. Many of the rest are expected to qualify for an expanded Medicaid program awaiting approval from the Legislature.

"It provides a framework for Minnesota and the federal government to partner together to ensure continuation and improvement of MinnesotaCare, and will enable thousands of low-income working Minnesotans to experience the benefits of significant health reform," Lucinda Jesson, the state's human services commissioner, said in a statement.

One of the centerpieces of the federal overhaul will be the creation of health care exchanges — online marketplaces where individuals and small businesses can go to sign up for health insurance and find out how much financial help they qualify for. About a quarter of all Minnesotans are expected to get their coverage through the state's exchange. However, for thousands of people in MinnesotaCare, the plans they would buy via the exchange were expected to cost them more than the coverage they now get.

Minnesota's U.S. senators, a bipartisan group of state legislators, and interest groups teamed up to lobby Health and Human Services Kathleen Secretary Sibelius to protect the MinnesotaCare participants who would have fallen through the cracks of a federal plan that's supposed to make health insurance more affordable. Minnesota now has a clearer path for how to do that, with federal funding, through a provision of the Accordable Care Act called the Basic Health Program, the state agency said.

SEIU Healthcare MN, a union of more than 17,000 health-care workers, said it was relieved by the announcement.

"Our members — the frontline caregivers in hospitals, clinics and nursing homes throughout the state — see all too often the struggles of working families without adequate coverage," SEIU Healthcare MN President Jamie Gulley said in a statement Wednesday.

State officials still face tight deadlines for working out all the details of how the federal overhaul will work in Minnesota. Open enrollment in Minnesota's exchange is due to begin in October and coverage through the exchange takes effect in January.